As living standards are improved and raised, people are paying more attention to the outer walls of the building, windows and doors as well as to interior decorations, furniture, partitions, and the like. The appearances of such items are much emphasized in various aspects, such as luminosity, safety, privacy and design.
Conventionally, ornamental glass is employed in interior partitions such as screens or inlaid into a wall for indoor use only. Such ornamental glass can be prepared by: (1) printing desired glazed pattern directly on a sheet of glass; (2) laminating the glass with an adhesive sheet of resin film with desired glazed pattern printed thereon in advance; (3) placing a resin film with a desired glazed pattern and an adhesive between two sheets of glass substrates, and laminating them under heat and pressure into a laminated ornamental glass plate. Such methods of producing the ornamental glass require a laminating curing treatment under heat and pressure, a printing technique for printing glaze patterns on a resin film or glass-laminating skills to obtain the desired delicate glazed pattern and a bubble-free ornamental glass article. The cost of production of such an article is generally high. The laminated glass article generally also needs further special rim-sealing treatment prior to its practical application and the laminate structure which is composed of different materials is apt to fall apart as room temperature and humidity vary. In such a structure with a single sheet of glass, the glazed painting pattern printed on one of the surfaces is exposed to the air and is therefore subject to sunlight or oxidization, so its colors will change and fade. The affected pattern can be further damaged when subjected to cleaning. Therefore, the ornamental glass obtained by conventional methods will not be durable. Aside from the above-mentioned disadvantages the material of the glazed painting patterns printed on conventional ornamental glass plates includes opaque glaze pigment, paint, oil ink or a mixture thereof, which after a period of time will fade away while being exposed to sunshine (infrared ray or ultraviolet rays), so such ornamental glass plates can be used indoors only. This explains why to date no ornamental glass plates for outdoor use is available.